In the house everything was at first still in the greying morning, and rain was falling. When he arose from his dreaming ecstasy, day had come and it was light. The whole house was at work. He went downstairs, asked for a piece of bread and drank from the fountain. He wandered about the house, nobody heeded him. Wherever he was, whatever he did, he was at ease: his soul had a centre. He took his food with the people, the farmer had not returned, nobody mentioned the wife or Romana. In the afternoon the carrier arrived. He was ready to take Andreas with him, but to judge from the way his business was going, he would have to leave before evening: they would spend the night in the next village down the valley.
A fresh wind was blowing into the valley, beautiful, big clouds were driving across it, and beyond, over the country, all was shining clear. A farm-hand carried the portmanteau and valise down to the cart, Andreas followed him. At the bottom of the stairs he turned back, and a voice told him that Romana was standing waiting up in his empty room. When he entered the room and found it empty, he could hardly believe it; he searched every corner, as though she might be hidden in the whitewashed wall. With bent head he went downstairs again. There he stood for a while irresolute, listening. Outside the grooms were talking as they helped to put the horses in. Andreas felt his breast contract. Without his will his feet carried him to the stable. The bay was standing there looking dejected, with its ears laid back; a few of the farm horses turned in their stalls as Andreas came in. Andreas stood—he did not know how long—in the dim place, listening to a twittering—then through the little barred window a shaft of gold shot slanting to the stable door, and hung there, a swallow glided through, flashing, and behind it Romana’s mouth, open, moist and twitching with suppressed weeping. He could hardly grasp that she was standing bodily before him, but he did grasp it, and the fulness of his heart paralysed his limbs. She was barefoot, her plaits were hanging down as if she had that moment jumped out of bed and run to him. He could and would not ask, but his arms half rose towards her. She did not come to him, nor did she shrink from him. She was as close to him as if she were part of him, and yet it was as if she did not see him. In any case, she did not look at him, and he made no move to approach her. Her mouth struggled with the words, her eyes with the tears that would not come. She pulled ceaselessly at her thin silver chain, as if she were trying to strangle herself, so as to withdraw from him utterly. It was as though pain were having its way with her, so that she did not even feel that Andreas was near. At last the chain broke—one piece slid into the bosom of her open gown, the other stayed in her hand. She pressed it from above on to the back of Andreas’s hand; her mouth twitched as if a scream must come and could not. She leaned against him; her mouth, moist and twitching, kissed his—then she was gone. The piece of silver chain had slipped from Andreas’s hand. He picked it up out of the straw—he did not know whether to follow her—everything was happening outside him, and at the same time in the very depths of his heart, where, till now, nothing that was not himself had ever pierced him—then he heard them looking for him outside. A crisis had come. Now, the thought flashed through him: turn everything upside-down, tell them I’m going to stay, have the luggage taken down, tell the farm-hands I’ve changed my mind. But how could he? How could he appear before Finazzer, even before his wife? What should he say, what reasons should he give? What kind of a man would he have had to be to take this upon himself and then stand his ground in a situation so suddenly reversed?
HE WAS already sitting in the cart; the horses had started, he did not know how. Time must pass; I cannot stay here, but I can come back, he thought, the same and yet different. He felt between his fingers the chain, that assured him that it was all reality and not a dream.
The cart rolled downhill; in front of him was the sun and the wide, sunlit country, behind him the narrow valley with the lonely homestead already lying in the shadow. His eyes were fixed ahead, but with a vacant, close look; the eyes of his heart were looking backwards with all their might. He was roused by the voice of the carrier, who was pointing with his whip up into the pure evening air where an eagle was wheeling. Now for the first time Andreas was aware of what lay before him. The road had wound out of the mountain valley and taken a sudden turn to the left. There a huge valley had opened; a river, no longer a brook, wound far below, but beyond it was the mightiest peak of the range, behind which, still high in the sky, the sun was sinking. Monstrous shadows fell down into the valley; whole forests, blackish blue, bristled on the riven foot of the mountain; waterfalls plunged darkly down in the ravines; above everything was free, bare, rising boldly upwards—sheer slopes, rock walls, crowned by the snowy peak, ineffably pure and radiant.
Never had Andreas known such a feeling in nature. He felt as if it had all, at a single stroke, risen from his own being—that power, that uprising and its crowning purity. The majestic bird was still wheeling above, alone in the light; with widespread wings it swept slow circles; from where it hovered it could see everything—the Finazzer valley and the farm, the village; the graves of Romana’s sisters and brothers were as near to its keen sight as these mountain gorges, in whose bluish shadows it was searching for a young roe or a stray goat. Andreas encompassed the bird—he rose towards it with a feeling of ecstasy. This time he felt no impulse to lose himself, he only felt the bird’s supreme power and gift flowing into his own soul. Every shadow, every clog, fell away from him. It was borne in upon him that, seen from high enough, the parted are united, and that loneliness is an illusion. He possessed Romana everywhere—he could take her into him wherever he would. That mountain, rising before him and towering to the skies, was a brother and more than a brother. As it took the tender fawn to its breast in its mighty spaces, covering it with cool shade, and hiding it from its pursuer with blue darkness, so Romana lived in him. She was a living being, a centre, with a paradise about her no more unreal than the one towering up beyond the valley. He looked into himself, and saw Romana kneel down to pray: she bent her knees as the fawn, when it lies down to rest, folds its tender legs, and the movement was ineffably dear to him. Circles dissolved in circles. He prayed with her, and when he looked, he knew that the mountain was simply his prayer. An unutterable certainty came home to him. It was the happiest moment of his life.
WHEN HE came downstairs to rejoin the people of the house he found the girl Zustina busily arguing with a small, middle-aged man, whose almost crescent-shaped nose gave him a curiously dashing appearance, and who had in his hand something in a cotton handkerchief which filled the room with the smell of fish.
“No, really, it cannot go on, the way you let people palm things off on you,” he heard her say. “If it were another day I would manage mother. But really, today you must take it back, and don’t forget the decorator. Argue it out with him, point by point, just as I told you. Decorators are a cunning lot, and have no conscience, but a man who can talk like you ought to be a match for anybody. The draw will be exactly a week after Lady Day, so that everything must be delivered the day before. If a single thing is missing a silver ducat will be struck off his pay. I want it exactly like a Corpus Christi altar, with drapery and wreaths in front, and the urn with the lottery tickets in the middle between arrangements of fresh flowers. He’s to charge no extras for putting it up. He’s to bring it here, and Zorzi will have to help in the arranging and decorating. Now go and tell him all that so that we may be proud of you, and leave your book here. I will cast it up.”
The old man was going away as Andreas entered. “Oh, there you are,” said Zustina. “Your luggage has just arrived, Zorzi will fetch men to carry it up. Then he will show you a good coffee-house, and take you to my sister’s if you like. She will be glad to see you. He’s useful for errands of that kind,” she added. “For that matter, there is absolutely no need for you to make a bosom friend of him at once. But after all, that’s your business. It takes all kinds to make a world, and we all have to get through it as best we can. What I say is, you must take the world as
you find it.”
She ran to the stove, looked into the oven, basted the meat; a number of garments, which seemed to belong to her mother and brothers, vanished into a big cupboard. She chased the cat off the table, and attended to a bird hanging in a cage in the window. “There was something else I wanted to say to you,” she went on, coming to a stand-still in front of Andreas. “I don’t know whether you have much money on you, or a letter to a banker. If it’s money, then give it to a business friend or anyone you happen to know in the town to keep for you. Not that there are dishonest people in the house, but I won’t take the responsibility. I’ve got enough to do to keep the house tidy and teach my two brothers and look after my father, for my mother generally works away from home. Besides, you can imagine how much I have to work and plan to get ready for the lottery. How easily offended … I’m sorry we can’t possibly offer you a ticket, even though you are in the house, but you are a foreigner, and our patrons are very particular in these things. The second prize is very nice too—it’s a gold and enamel snuff-box. I’ll show it to you as soon as it comes home from the jewellers.”
Meanwhile she added up the little account book, using for the purpose a tiny pencil which she had hidden in one of the curls of her toupet, for her hair was dressed as it might be for a ball, in a high toupet. She wore cloth slippers, a taffeta skirt, with silver lace, but over it a checked dressing-jacket which was much too big for her and left completely bare her charmingly slender, yet by no means childish, throat. Amid the half-exclamations with which she interspersed her talk, her eyes darted from Andreas to the stove and the cat. Suddenly something flashed through her mind; she flew to the window, leant far out, and called shrilly down: “Count Gasparo, Count Gasparo—listen! I’ve got something to say to you.”
“Here I am,” said the man with the hooked nose and the fish, unexpectedly coming through the door into the room. “Why scream at me through the window? Here I am”—and he turned to Andreas. “I have only just heard below that you are the young foreign nobleman whom I have the honour to welcome as my guest. I wish both for your and our own sakes that you may be happy under our humble roof. You occupy the rooms of my daughter Nina. You do not yet know her, and so you cannot yet appreciate the proof of respect and confidence we have given you in placing that apartment at your disposal. The room of such a being is like the robe of a saint—it harbours powers. Whatever you may experience in this town—and you have come here to gather knowledge and experience—within those walls peace will re-enter your mind, and steadiness your soul. The very air of those rooms breathes—how shall I put it?—virtue invincible. Rather die than sacrifice that virtue was the iron resolve of my child. I, sir”—he touched Andreas with his hand, which was white and extremely shapely, but too small for a man and hence displeasing—“was in a position neither to strengthen my child in such a resolve nor to reward her for it. Mine is a wrecked existence. Storms have hurled me from the summit of my family.” He withdrew, letting his hand sink with an inimitable gesture. With a bow he left the room.
Zustina’s face was radiant with admiration at the Count’s speech. And indeed the manner in which he had pronounced these few sentences was a masterpiece of decorum and condescension. Dignity was mingled with humanity; gravity and experience were tempered with confidence. The elder spoke to the younger, the host to his guest, the old man tried by life spoke as a father to the untried youth, and the Venetian nobleman to a nobleman—it was all there. “What do you think of my father’s way of speaking?” she asked. In her sincere and childish pleasure she seemed to have forgotten that she had called him back for anything at all. “That’s the way,” she cried, “he finds the tone to suit every occasion. He has had a great deal of trouble, and many enemies, but no one can deny his great talents.” While before she had been quicksilvery and eager, but tart, she was now kindled from within; her eyes flashed and her mouth moved with an indescribable, childlike zest. There was something of the squirrel about her, yet she was a resolute, honest little woman.
“So now you know my father too, and before an hour has passed you will know my sister, and some of her friends too, for certain. The most distinguished of them all is the Duke of Camposagrado, the Spanish ambassador. He is such a great gentleman that when the King of Spain speaks to him he puts his hat on. Don’t be startled when you see him: he looks like a wild beast, but he’s a very great gentleman. Then there’s one of her friends I would like myself—but why speak about me? He’s an Austrian officer, a Slavonian; that means he has an Austrian captain’s commission and perquisites, the cattle import duties on Hungarian and Styrian oxen coming in by Trieste—a fine business. He’s a handsome man too, and madly in love with Nina. Just think—he never gets up from the table without drinking her health and then, every time, throwing his glass through the window pane into the canal or against the wall; but when it’s a special day he simply breaks all the glass on the table, just in honour of Nina. Of course, he pays for the glasses afterwards. Isn’t it savage? But in his country it’s the highest courtesy. He’s a great gambler—however, you will get to know him yourself. If he were my husband I would soon break him of it.
“But one thing,” she went on, looking at him with a charming expression of gravity and importance, “if you get mixed up in disputes, misunderstandings, quarrels, and so on, get your own way. Don’t let anybody, man or woman, get round you with tears. That’s a silly weakness and I can’t bear it. But I’m not speaking about Nina’s tears. Nina’s tears are as real as gold. When she cries she’s like a little child. Nobody has the heart to refuse her what she wants, for she’s ten times kinder than I am, although she is twenty-one, and I’m not sixteen yet. But how can it interest you,” she added, with an arch look, as she busied herself about the bird in the cage, “to hear me talking about myself? You didn’t come to Venice for that. Go downstairs. Zorzi will be waiting for you down there.”
Andreas was already on the stairs when she came after him. “One thing more—it just occurred to me. You look good-natured, and a good man must be warned at the first step. Don’t let anybody inveigle you into accepting his bills, even though he should offer you at the same time others to cover them which are due before his. Never. Do you understand me?” For an instant her hand rested lightly on Andreas’s arm. It was exactly the same gesture as her father had made before, yet how much truth there is in the saying that if two do the same thing the result is worlds apart. The little hand was so charming and the motherly, womanly gesture enchanting. She was already back in the house, and as Andreas went downstairs he heard her calling to Zorzi on the other side through the window.
“Isn’t she a lovely little thing?” said Zorzi, who was standing below, as if he had guessed what was busying Andreas’s thoughts.
“But what is all this about the lottery?” asked Andreas, after a few steps. “Who distributes the prizes and what has the family got to do with it? It looks as if they were organizing it themselves.”
The artist did not reply at once. “And so they are,” he said, slackening his pace at a street corner to let Andreas catch up with him. “Why shouldn’t I tell you? The lottery is being arranged in a circle of rich and distinguished gentlemen, and the first prize is the girl herself.”
“How do you mean—the girl herself?”
“Well, her virginity, if you want another word for it. She’s a good girl, and has taken it into her head to rescue her family from their poverty. You ought to hear how nicely she speaks about it, and how much trouble she has taken with the subscription list. For whatever she does must be done properly. A great gentleman, a friend of the family, has taken over the patronage.” Here he lowered his voice. “He is the patrician, Signor Sacramozo, who was lately Governor of Corfu. A ticket costs no less than twenty-four sequins, and not a name has been put on the subscription list that has not been approved by Signor Sacramozo.”
Andreas had suddenly blushed with such violence that a haze blurred his eyesight, and he nearly slipped on a
squashed pomegranate lying in his way. The other looked at him sidelong as he walked. “An affair of this kind,” he went on, “can be arranged in a circle of men of breeding who have the decency not to let it get abroad, otherwise the authorities would intervene. So the gentlemen of the town would be rather unwilling to let a foreigner into an arrangement of the kind. But if you really care about it, I’ll do what I can for you, and perhaps I could get a ticket for you indirectly. I mean in this way, that one of the ticket-holders, for a consideration, which won’t be small, might hand over his chance to you without your name being mentioned.” Andreas did not know what to answer, and quickly changed the subject by saying how astonished he was that the elder daughter should know no better way of coming to her family’s help, and leave it to the little sister to sacrifice herself in so unusual a fashion.
“Well, it isn’t really so unusual, what she’s doing,” returned the other, “and there’s nothing much to be hoped for from Nina. The little one knows that better than anybody. Nina can’t manage money, and what you give her today melts between her fingers tomorrow. She’s a beauty, but she’s no match for Zustina in brains. I’ll give you an instance: once I wanted to present to her a rich and noble gentleman from Vienna, Count Grassalkowicz—you’ll know the name. And you’ll know what it means to make the acquaintance of a man who, as you know, has two palaces in Vienna and one in Prague, and whose estates in Croatia are as big as all the possessions of the Republic. ‘What’s the man’s name?’ says she, drawing up her nose, and when she does that there’s no more to be got out of her than out of a shying horse. ‘The name,’ she says, ‘sounds like a common oath, and the man will be like it. Take him where you like. I won’t have anything to do with him.’ That’s Nina all over.”
Andreas Page 5
